Expats ‘Commit a Crime Every 24 Minutes’
DAMMAM — Expatriates commit daily around 54 crimes at an average rate of one criminal offense every 24 minutes, Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Sunday quoting a report by the Justice Ministry.
The report, covering the period 2013-2014, said in one year expatriates were involved in a total of 18,981 crimes.
According to the report, the crimes varied between murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, theft, sodomy, physical violence and others. The report said around 60 percent of these crimes were committed in Makkah. Drug trafficking and alcohol manufacturing constituted the majority of the offenses, it said.
Under Saudi rules, any expatriate imprisoned for any crime will be deported home after serving their sentence.
According to the report, drug smuggling, trafficking and abuse constituted about 28 percent of the crimes followed by alcohol peddling and manufacturing (12.97 percent), robbery (9.94 percent), traffic accidents (9.9 percent), physical violence (7.47 percent) and sodomy (3.96 percent). The report said there were other crimes committed by expatriates that were not specified in the statistics. These included 28 kidnapping cases, 242 cases of domestic violence against women and 95 cases of child abuse.